


ackerman's adventures

by miradeliri



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 19:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15126221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miradeliri/pseuds/miradeliri
Summary: the adventure shall be arduous! dangerous! unbelievable! and yet it shall all make perfect sense as we follow andy ackerman, our adventurer, through the strangest and most delightful of places on his most important quest for his kin!updated weekly @ miradeliri.wordpress.com, edited version posted here for archiving purposes :)





	ackerman's adventures

The shadows are better company than the other inhabitants of Patricia’s Home for Troubled Youth.

Simply put, they’re not bland, boring and bumbling creatures capable merely of eating, sleeping and contributing to the society’s waste – which was, rather unfortunately, an extremely accurate description of everyone else Andy had met so far.

After all, nothing particularly wanted and everything that is unwanted has a place in Patricia’s Home. There’s the sea animals, rescued from certain death by Patricia’s daughter, Katie. There’s the land animals, an old grumpy cat and a host of pests, taking refuge from the hostile world outside. There’s the furniture, the best of them falling apart and the worst of them, broken.

There’s the Troubled Youth.

Suffice to say, he makes sure he’s not one. His efforts paid off; despite being an official resident of the society’s unofficial dumpster, all he has to show for it is his own plate during mealtimes. Bed, closet and a place in the school next door? That’s for Troubled Youths. Not for him.

It works out nicely since, between meals, he’s free to roam wherever. Usually he’d haunt the woods, or the bibliothèques, but it’s been about a moi since he’s last paid the unknowns a visit and he reckons that it’s about time to go again.

They’re in the cemetery behind the Coroner’s post, just down the rue, buried with all the other passerbys found dead in this bubble of existence. A collective grave by the edge of the woods, sheltered by a half-withered elm and a half-wizened ash, their marker a lean obsidian affair that read, “You are now where we once were, and we are now where you surely will be.”

The Coroner left the gate on a latch; there’s nothing particularly valuable in the cemetery, and it’s not like anyone requires reminders about the kind of people that usually were passerbys. Even dead, they’re still unnatural. Ones whose ashes are kept in special little matchboxes, buried under painted wooden signs if they’ve left a name and someplace to return them to, and buried in the collective grave if not.

No one who isn’t an unnatural themselves will risk disturbing the eternal peace of one, however dead they may be.

Besides, Andy’s long since proven himself capable of behaving. Back when there were two of them, his sister, Rosetta, and him, the Coroner let them into the post whenever the weather gets nasty. They took turns with the couch and the foldable mattress in the shed. Then there was Tobias, who was allowed to share with whoever’s taking the mattress, so long as they cleared all evidences of his shedding. Now it’s just him, but he’s trusted to behave without supervision, and he’s allowed in anytime.

Fur shed on the couch alerts him to the fact that Tobias had dropped by. The spot’s cold when he touches so it must have been a while since Tobias was curled up there, and Andy’s a little uncertain as to why Tobias hadn’t stuck around.

Rosetta had never visited that he knew of; she hates this place with a passion he never understood. She knows he accepts it, but she tries to make up for it with gifts all the same. Bound books filled with detailed accounts of the places she visited, bundled with sets of clothing she picked up and estimated to be in his size. In return, he sketches stories of his explorations in the woods around the town and beyond. Tobias always stayed, to pick those up and to give him a thorough lathering.

So where is Tobias? For that matter, where’s the package he always brings? Andy walks around the post, checking, but it isn’t by the door or beneath the tables. Nor is it left on the floor, or the couch. He pauses by the couch, facing the door directly – it’s in the right place to have a good view of everything around.

He sits down by it and asks, “Will you share your story with me?”

There’s a moment before the shadow obliged, and Andy’s watching as the Coroner wandered out of the post with his mug of coffee still steaming gently, followed swiftly by the entry of Tobias through the window by the door. A single slim package clamped between his teeth instead of tied around his neck, left… somewhere on the couch, where the shadow couldn’t see.

Customarily, he thanks the shadow when it releases him. Then he checks the couch, coming up with the package that was slipped between two cushions. Briefly, he wonders, ‘How did Tobias even get it in there?’ as he turns the package over and picks at the twine.

He catches the little block that slipped out. It was hollow with something in it, given the rattle when he shakes it, but feeling it over revealed only smooth surfaces and sharp edges. Except for the folded note taped to the bottom. He peels it off and studies it, before unfolding it.

Twenty-one words – or phrases – all written in strange symbols. ‘CD21’ is printed boldly in bright red marker at the top; right at the bottom, scrawled in Rosetta’s distinctly tidy script, is ‘N, take care of this. Sorry.’

Sorry?

He studies the block again, and it appears as innocuous as it had been, if not as untouched. Andy bites his lips unconsciously, considering its contents. For Rosetta to send it to him for safekeeping and apologise, it must be something dangerous. Possibly in itself, possibly just to whoever has the misfortune of having it at the moment.

The note must mean something.

Retrieving a pouch from the Coroner’s hat rack, he empties its contents on the coffee table and tucks the block in, with some pencils and a stack of unused paper. He slings it over his shoulder and leaves.

He’s at the gate when he remembers that he had come here to visit the unknowns. “La bibliothèque’s closing in a few hours,” he appends to a whispered apology. “I’d rather not wait till demain; I’m just checking a few things.”

As it turns out, three items on the list were written in characters from this obscure language more common a few worlds away. The rest are simply a mystery even the bibliothèque’s rather vast collection offers no help with.

Even those written in a language with dictionaries available in the bibliothèque cannot be translated; not that Andy had expected otherwise. Rosetta never relied on a simple translation if she could do multiple rounds of translation and encoding.

Still, he painstakingly copies down the two sets of phonetic characters. As far as he understands, these can be used like alphabets to form words, some of which can be written more succinctly with the third set of characters. Already, he can recognize one whole set.

For a session this short, he’s reasonably satisfied with the progress made. Even if it is insufficient for him to attain mastery of a new language, and he fears that he shall never be able to understand most of what is written in the third set of characters, this has been rather productive.


End file.
